Bulla gouldiana
Bulla gouldiana, the California bubble, Gould's bubble or cloudy bubble snail, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Bullidae, the bubble snails. It is found in shallow water on sheltered coasts of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Pilsbry, 1895 · CC0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- cloudy bubblePBDB
- Sits inside
- BullaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Bullidae
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Bullidae
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Bulla
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 2.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka.
17 occurrences of Bulla gouldiana on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
17 occurrences- Pliocene24%
- Pleistocene76%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Bulla gouldiana has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Bulla gouldiana and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Bulla gouldiana and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
547 taxa- Glossaulax reclusiana12 sites
- Californiconus californicus11 sites
- Crucibulum spinosum11 sites
- Cryptomya californica11 sites
- Lucinisca nuttalli11 sites
- Argopecten ventricosus10 sites
- Leptopecten latiauratus10 sites
- Anomia peruviana9 sites
- Callianax biplicata9 sites
- Cerithideopsis californica9 sites
- Dentalium neohexagonum9 sites
- Laevicardium substriatum9 sites
- Melampus olivaceus9 sites
- Acanthinucella spirata8 sites
- Caesia perpinguis8 sites
- Callianax pedroana8 sites
- Crepidula onyx8 sites
- Leukoma staminea8 sites
- Macoma nasuta8 sites
- Mexicardia procera8 sites
- Tagelus (Tagelus) californianus8 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus8 sites
- Tivela (Pachydesma) stultorum8 sites
- Turritella cooperi8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Bulla gouldiana, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
11 references- A review of the Quaternary Mollusca of the Palos Verdes Peninsula3
- Geology of southeastern Ventura basin, Los Angeles County, California3
- Paleoecologic analysis and age of a late Pleistocene fossil assemblage from Upper Newport Bay, Newport Beach, Orange County, California2
- The paleontology of the Pleistocene molluscan fauna of the Newport Bay area, California2
- Paleoecology and paleoenvironments of the Pleistocene deposits of Bahia la Choya (Gulf of California, Sonora, Mexico)1
- Three late Cenozoic molluscan faunules from Baja California. with a note on diatomite from west of San Felipe1
- Pleistocene invertebrates from the Dume Terrace, western Santa Monica Mountains, California1
- Pleistocene mollusks from Tecolote Creek, San Diego, California1
- Paleontology and stratigraphy of some marine Pleistocene deposits in northwest Los Angeles Basin, California1
- Geology and Paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California1
- The Neocene stratigraphy of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California1
Each of the 17 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Bulla gouldiana
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Pilsbry, 1895
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Bulla gouldiana was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itBulla through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Pilsbry 1895)